Schambelan + Fromm teamed together to design a mountain bike hotel in Pregasina, Italy. The hotel seems to cling to the side of a mountain, approximately 500 meters above the northern tip of Lake Garda. With the project’s geometric contorted aesthetic and proximity to a variety of routes, trails and single tracks, the hotel intends to attract extreme sports enthusiasts who would be visiting the Alps.
More about the hotel after the break.
Daniel Bonilla Arquitectos‘s latest project is an open chapel in La Calera, Colombia that is gently nestled into the surroundings. The simplicity of the geometry adds a touch of elegance to the pious space, as the natural features of the environment, wind and light, create “an essential harmony.”
More images after the break.
The 2010 AIA New York winners were recently announced (we’ll share the full over view this weekend with you), and this project by Kohn Pedersen Fox received a design award in the Unbuilt category. Just like the other winning projects, the design showcases New York talent and was chosen for its “design quality, program resolution, innovation, thoughtfulness and technique.” The project, entitled Urban Market, is for Tianjin, China. The urban center is a way to reinvigorate the river banks through new uses, such as cultural institutions. The hope it that the center will grow to establish “a new identity for the city that links its culture to its historic place of commerce.”
More about the winning project after the break.
A few weeks ago, we featured Arhitektura d.o.o‘s second place entry for a footbridge in Maribor competition. Here’s another proposal by Toronto-based Ja Studio in collaboration with Tadj-Farzin Studio that revisits the idea of the bridge as a multi-functional urban surface. The 150 meter long bridge, fit for cycling and walking, resolves its geometry between the structural issues of crossing and spanning and the functional opportunities that may potentially arise from the structural necessities.
More images and more about the proposal after the break.
O + A have conceived a conceptual pool scheme for a river in Amsterdam. Entitled Urban Beach, the pool appears as a continuous band that is folded and lifted to create a mobius strip-like effect. The folding allows the object to become more flexible, and the architects see it as a framework for various programmatic activities, such as an open-air movie theater in the summer, or a wellness center in the winter.
More images and more about the pool after the break, via Dezeen.
CEBRA has been designing several buildings for young users, (we recently featured their 1st-3rd grade building) and their new Design Kindergarten attempts to break preconceived notions of “what a school should look like” as a way to pique children’s curiosity and creativity. Still in progress, the daycare center’s organization is based around different “themes” that focus of specific activities -in this case art, design and architecture. This is somewhat new to the Danish model of daycare, as the building will turn into more of an educational preschool facility where knowledge is acquired, not though a formal lesson, but rather through play. In addition to the architectural strategy of redefining a daycare center, the client/architect relation is something to be noted. The parents participated in the design process in a very active way, offering ideas and criticism to push the project forward.
More images, videos and lots of diagrams after the break.
With all the sustainable and recycled projects, it is always fun to feature one that incorporates a material being used differently from its intended use, which we haven’t seen before. Of course, we can discuss whether the repetition of a recycled element categorizes it as a piece of architecture, yet, no matter our standing on that, we should agree that the pallets’ new function provides a surprisingly nice touch on the home’s exterior (especially with respect to the night time images). The home, entitled Pallet house is the creation of two students from the University of Vienna, and as the name suggests, reuses pallets to form a modular, energy efficient and affordable housing. The idea stemmed from a competition back in 2008, which the duo took first for, and now the homes have been exhibited in several European cities including Venice, Vienna, Linz and Grenoble. Currently in South Africa, the home costs 11USD per sq foot and could become a clever approach to low income housing.
More images after the break.
Cheungvogl, a young international architectural practice based in Hong Kong (see previous projects by Cheungvogl featured on AD here), designed two residences in Tokyo on a private development. House 2a is to be occupied by the client, a Japanese-German couple, based in Tokyo while House 2b is for sale. The client’s required that the design be, “Calm, but not sterile. Humble, and yet unexpected. Economical, nothing extravagant. Open space with flexible floor plans and a space to contemplate.” Working with these ideas in mind, Cheungvogl created related residences that also become separate enities.
More about the residences and more images after the break.
Based in Germany, Studio Aisslinger‘s new housing prototype is modular, sustainable and transportable. The low energy house, named ‘Fincube’, is comprised of thin horizontal “ledges” of locally grown wood that wrap the slightly bulging form. This second facade layer provides privacy for the inhabitants and fuses the man-made structure with its natural surroundings. The home provides 47 sqm of living space with a minimal CO2 footprint, and can also be easily dismantled and rebuilt on a different site. The supporting structure is made of local larch and the interior is a combination of larch and stone-pine. Organized in a helical structure, the entrance area blends into a generous open kitchen with an adjacent living space, and around the corner rests the bedroom.
More images after the break.
A few days ago, we featured Cheungvogl‘s Nunnmps project, and today we bring you their KAT-Ohno master plan, recently awarded first prize. The plan includes a development site with 4 office buildings and an extension of a new forum to provide flexible spaces for training seminars, lectures, exhibitions, film screening. The project focuses on an architecture that is less about mass and structure, “so more can happen.” The architecture becomes less visible and less defined so in a symposium setting, speakers and audience can have spontaneous intellectual dialogue in one space.
More about the project after the break.
A new hospital typology has been designed by the team of Hord Coplan Macht + Spevco that eliminates the need for a standard hospital. In their design, 58 trailers provide a fully operational, fully mobile 48-bed hospital. The trailers include every aspect of a hospital – from waiting gift shops, to surgical suites with 4 O.R.s, pharmacies and labs. The design is the future of how westernized health care will travel abroad. It is a system that effectively transforms health care for entire regions and countries over time, letting the hospital and care come to the patient.
More about the mobile idea after the break.
Jean Nouvel‘s new National Museum of Qatar utilizes technology to create a thoroughly new institution. Entire walls become cinematic displays and hand-held mobile devices guide visitors through the thematic displays of the collections. Located on a 1.5 million-square-foot site at the south end of Doha’s Corniche, it will be the first monument travelers arriving from the airport will set their eyes upon. Conceived as growing out of the ground, the building uses rings of low-lying, interlocking pavilions, to encircle a large courtyard area and encompass 430,000 square feet of indoor space. Tilting, interpenetrating disks define the pavilions’ floors, walls and roofs, and the exterior in a sand-colored concrete. Nouvel likens it to a “bladelike petal of the desert rose, a mineral formation of crystallized sand found in the briny layer just beneath the desert’s surface.”
More images after the break.
For their latest project, an IT security and service office, Cheungvogl worked to create a deep connection with the site. The office, Nunnmps, borders Lake Michigan in an area of Chicago that is close enough to the city center yet rests on the outskirts in an undeveloped site with vast views of the skyline. “The design development grew as naturally as the terrain overtook the site in the absence of human inhabitation over the years. Through uninterrupted silence, the site is covered with layers of shimmering grass and matured trees. We want to retain and capture the natural quality of silence,” explained the architects.
More about the project after the break.
Jonathan Clark’s renovation of the 1960s Longford Community School adds a colorful front for the two storey extension and partial conversion project. Extending from a lifeless masonry building, the choice of using colourful timber offers a nice contrast with a more aesthetic touch. Timber was chosen because the clients desired that the main material selection include environmentally friendly materials. The extension includes two classrooms and a fitness center on the ground level, and a library on the first floor. The interior also incorporates the vibrant color palette of the exterior, making the interior feel more “relaxed.” Aluminium grating panels provide solar control as well as some structural stiffening to the external structure. For the roof, the timber is clad with silver ‘Trespa’ panels that give the impression of “floating/sliding across the exposed timber roof beams.”
More images after the break.
Organized by MoMA and PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, the Rising Currents exhibit cannot be missed by architects, ecologists, or green enthusiasts…let alone any New Yorker. The exhibit is a cohesive showcase of five projects which tackle the lingering truth that within a few years, the waterfront of the New York harbor will drastically change. Dealing with large scale issues of climate change, the architects delve into a specific scale that we can recognize and relate to. The projects are not meant to be viewed as a master plan, but rather each individual zone serves as a test site for the team to experiment. The projects demonstrate the architects’ abilities to look passed the idea of climate change as a problem, and move on to see the opportunities it presents. Barry Bergdoll, the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA, explained, “Your mission is to come up with images that are so compelling they can’t be forgotten and so realistic that they can’t be dismissed.”
More about each zone after the break.
Expected to be completed in 2013, Herzog & de Meuron’s new redevelopment project in Porta Volta, Milan will include the headquarters for the Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. The Feltrinelli Group considers the site as an ideal environment for the foundation’s multiple activities and the overall masterplan for Porta Volta will consist of the Fondazione, two new office buildings, and a generous green area. “This undertaking by the Feltrinelli Group has an important urban dimension in that it strengthens and reinforces the city.”
More about the project and more images after the break.
RISCO Architects‘ new 5-star Altis Belém Hotel contains 50 rooms and a number of facilities intended to support water sports. The hotel is designed in a way as to not constitute a visual obstacle along the axis between the Belém Tower and the Monument to the Discoveries. The hotel is a very narrow structure composed of a rectangular platform and “pockets” that hold different entities, such as a restaurant, to provide privacy. Above this platform, a larger green space opens for the guests to enjoy. On the exterior of the hotel, what appears to be an elaborate surface is actually a system of shutters that guests can open or close to reveal their larger balconies.
In an interesting article from the New York Times this week, different families completed not so typical renovations. A few years ago, the Sleeper family moved from their crowded Missouri ranch house when they saw an eBay offering for three acres with an empty sandstone cave in Festus, Missouri. The initial idea to build a larger home on the land was soon abandoned as the family realized the potential the former quarry offered. With 15,000 feet of naturally insulated space, the Sleeper family took up a new residence – inside the cave. The older family members helped add more “home” touches to the cave and since the cave’s bare walls shed sand, the Sleepers placed interior roofs or umbrellas over areas like the kitchen that need to stay sand-free. Other than that, the family truly enjoys the natural feel of the space and have created a comfortable home. “The inside of the house feels like you’re outdoors without the discomfort of hot or cold,” Mrs. Sleeper states.
More images after the break.